


FFVII Folk Tales: The Children

by ixieko



Series: FFVII Folk Tales [16]
Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Creation Myth, Folklore, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-03
Updated: 2016-01-03
Packaged: 2018-05-11 10:06:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5623408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ixieko/pseuds/ixieko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A legend about the first two people on Gaia, the races they have given birth to and what had become of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	FFVII Folk Tales: The Children

Long, long ago, when the land was very new, the very first Man lived with the very first Woman on a small island that was floating in the middle of the endless Ocean. So tiny was the island that they could only sit on it back to back, and even then water was lapping at their feet.  
Tired and bored of so little space, they began to pick the sand and pebbles from the sea bottom and pour it on the island to make it bigger, and though it was very hard work, they worked day and night, and little by little they made enough space for three.

As soon as there was enough space, their first child was born. Tall and strong she was, with skin blue like ocean and hair green like seaweed, because her parents had spent too much time in salty waters diving for sand and pebbles, and the parents called her Lamuai, which means the Child of the Sea. Deep she dived into the ocean, and talked with the strange creatures that lived there, and befriended them.

With the girl’s help the island grew faster, but still it was too small.  
Once, when Lamuai was diving to the very bottom of the ocean in search for more sand and pebbles, she saw a big creature whose tail was pinned by a huge boulder.  
“Help me!” The creature pleaded, and the girl tried to lift the boulder, but it was too big and too heavy. Then she went and called all the sea dwellers, and together they freed the creature.  
“Thank you,” It said. “I am son of the Great Sea Dragon, how can I repay your kindness, human child?”  
And the girl said, “I live with my parents on a very tiny island. They cannot swim and dive like I can, and they are unhappy. Please, can you make the water become more shallow so that they had more land to step on?”  
The son of the Sea Dragon agreed, and went to his father, and his father went to the Spirit of the Earth, and they talked to the Sun himself. Together they made land lift higher, and so the continents were created. The night fell, and the next day came, and instead of a very small island, the Man and the Woman found themselves on the shore of a very new land, where tall mountains stood. In those mountains the Man found a small cave and called it their new home. But Lamuai didn’t like the dry land, and so she left her parents and returned to the sea to live there.

The second child was short in height and broad in shoulders, and his skin was grey-brown like the stone walls of the cave where he spent his childhood. The Father called him Tawyn, or the Child of the Stone, for the boy liked mountains, and stones, and he could coax the ore into giving him its precious metals. He learned to make tools that made the work easier, and dug deeper into the roots of the mountains, building a net of winding tunnels, adorned with beautiful ornaments carved out of stone.

Soon the Mother was expecting a new baby, but she did not want to stay in the dark caves, and so the Father took the tools, and built a house in the forest. Tawyn refused to go with them and stayed behind, in the caves, for he did not like the forest as much as he liked the mountains.  
The third child was thin and nimble, with eyes green like spring leaves and skin olive like young willow bark. She talked to animals and birds in their own tongues, and when she danced her way through the tall grass, flowers bloomed all around her. Mother named her Nimnukai, or the Child of the Forest.

Beautiful was the forest, but the Man and the Woman wanted to see what lied behind it, and so, when Nimnukai grew older, they left the house to her and went to explore the land. Out of the forest they went, and to the hills where old bones of the mountains were standing like great stone pillars, and when spring thunderstorms came, lightnings struck right into those pillars. There the Man and the Woman stopped, and lived there for a while, and their fourth child was born, with eyes grey like storm clouds and hair silver like lightning. His name was Talinuryn, or Thunder Child, and more than anything he liked storms. Lightnings were his friends and never hurt him; when he called to them, the storms came to his aid.

Some time later, the Man and the Woman left the hills (and, just like his brothers and sisters, Talinuryn stayed behind) and went to steppes, where wind was blowing freely and the sky was bluer than anywhere else. There the Woman gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl, and their skin was sun-kissed and brown, and their dark eyes were always squinted against the bright sun and strong wind. The boy’s hair was black like rich soil of the steppes, and girl’s hair was white like long feathers of feather-grass. Their names were Damevkyn and Anmevkai, which means “Left and Right halves of the Heart”, for they were always holding together, inseparable. While Damevkyn had the power to make things heavier and draw them to himself, Anmevkai had the power to make things lighter and push them away, and together they shaped and reshaped their land as they wanted.   
The steppes were their home, and when the parents left, they stayed.

After that, the Man and the Woman arrived at the foot of a great Mountain that was so high that it was almost touching the sky. Its top was covered in thick fumes highlighted by red flames. So large was the mountains that they climbed it for several years, and when they finally stepped at the very top and the Woman saw the crater filled with red molten lava, she cried in awe and gave birth to the seventh child, whose eyes were red as flames and skin was black like smoke and hardened lava. For several more years the Man and the Woman lived there, and when they decided to go away and began to climb down the mountain slope, their daughter, whom they named Togonai, or the Child of the Fire, stayed, for she loved the fire and the smokes, and the land below seemed too bright and too cold for her.

Climbing down the mountain, the Man and the Woman wandered into a ravine filled with poisonous fumes from the volcano and became ill and unable to go further. In despair, they called out to their children, and, hearing their cries, Togonai turned into a black dragon and carried them to the warm swamp at the foot of the mountain. There, in a small mud hut, the eighth child was born, whose skin was yellow, and hair and eyes black, and who could breath and drink poison with no harm to herself. She loved snakes, and they often wrapped themselves around her like belts and scarves and wristbands, and the smallest of them weaved themselves into her hair like colored ribbons, and the Mother named her Nallukai, which means The Snake Child. While the parents were recovering, Nallukai travelled the swamp and the mountains, and when they left, she stayed there.

Behind the swamp the cold plains lay, where trees did not grow. It was covered in a thin shimmering mist, and at night strange lights shined in the sky. Deserted and unfriendly was that land, and lost spirits roamed it, unable to find their way to the Realm of the Dead. Frightened by them, the Man built the stone house and hid there with the Woman. They wanted to go back, but, before they could leave, she gave birth to the ninth child. Grey was his skin, and his eyes were changing color, as if the ghostly flames from the sky were burning inside him, and when his first cry has flown over the plains, it chased away the mist, and the spirits saw their way and left. With the mist, the fear went away too, and animals returned, and plants began to grow. Seeing this, the Man and the Woman gave their son the name Taderyn, or the Child of Hope, and decided to travel farther, to the snow-covered mountains.  
For several years they were crossing the plains, and when they reached the mountains, Taderyn stayed behind, for he sensed that the evil was still lurking around, and he wanted to keep his home and all its inhabitants safe.

Tall were the mountains, and strong winds were blowing from the top. Half way to the mountain pass, the Woman was almost blown off the narrow path, and there, in a small opening between two steep cliffs, their tenth child was born. Too soon he was born, and he was too small, with hair yellow like sun, and eyes blue like sky, and skin white like clouds. Winds were his friends, and when he whistled to them his songs, they listened and changed their strength and way, and for that he was named Ardyn, The Child of the Wind. When the Man and the Woman left the mountains, he stayed.

After that the Man and the Woman arrived to the snow-covered space that stretched all the way to the great Northern Sea. They travelled through it, making stops in huts they made from snow. In one of those huts their eleventh child, Imannai, was born. Her name means the Child of the Winter, and she was slim and beautiful, with skin white like snow and hair green and blue like ice. Her eyes were red like fire her parents were lighting every night to warm themselves, but she did not fear the cold; she loved blizzard, and snowstorm was like warm summer rain for us.

Sooner or later, the Man and the Woman had crossed the snow plains and reached the northernmost mountains. Imannai bid farewell to her parents and returned to her snow-covered home, and they went forward. There, at the very end of the land, beside the frozen Sea, they met an old hermit who welcomed them to his home and asked them what they were doing and where were they going, and they told him about their travels and their children.  
Little they knew, for the old hermit was a sorcerer named Haktyryn, or the Son of the Dark; he wasn’t given life by the Sun, but by the Darkness that hides between the stars, and his heart never held even a sliver of light and warmth. When he heard about the magic powers the children possessed, he put the Man and the Woman into the deepest, coldest sleep, and left them in his house, and locked the door, and went outside in search for the children.

While the Parents were travelling, their Children lived their own lives. They looked after their lands, and under their watchful eyes and skilful hands it flourished, and their own children were growing in numbers. They exchanged their knowledge of magic among themselves and taught each other their skills, but the most effective for them was the magic they received upon birth.

The sorcerer Haktyryn first visited the Children of the Sea. Pretending to be a man of another tribe, he walked among them and tried to learn their secrets, but they saw some kind of darkness in him and refused to teach him. Seeing that his attempts were futile, he then abducted one of their youngest, killed him and ate his heart, and with it received a small part of their magic. The others attacked him, but he fled, turning the water behind him into poison, and only Nallukai’s help saved them from death. After that the Children of the Sea were reluctant to stay too close to the surface, and Lamuai led them into the deep ocean where Haktyryn would never find them. There they were hiding for ages upon ages, and changed so much that they didn’t even resemble other Children anymore.

The kingdom of Tawyn and his Children of the Stone hadn’t interested Haktyryn much, for he saw that they were more interested in their craft than the magic, and so the Children of the Stone least of all suffered from his attacks.

Nimnukai saw him for what he was the second he showed himself at her door, and she immediately cast him out of the Forest and sent her children to warn the other tribes of the dangerous sorcerer. But the world was still very new and innocent, and for the most of the Children, the thought of someone being deliberately evil seemed too unreal, and most of them didn’t believe her.

Talinuryn, the Child of Thunder, lived alone and didn’t have any children, for he didn’t like to be around other people. When Haktyryn came to him, Talinuryn asked him to leave him alone, and added a couple of lightnings to his words. But Haktyryn dodged them and attacked the wizard.  
When one of the Children of the Forest found Talinuryn, he was dying. With his last breath, he prayed to the Sun for his magic to be given to the Children of the Forest, and when life left him, his body was turned into a bright red stone. There, in that stone, his spirit and his magic was residing, ready to answer if his kin needed him.

After the battle with Talinuryn, Haktyryn was gravely injured, and crawled to the steppes where the Twins, Damevkyn and Anmevkai lived. There he changed his appearance so that both twins saw him differently, and when they came to him, he told them that he was attacked by a wild animal. The twins took him into their home and tended to his wounds, and let him stay until he was stronger. When Damevkyn looked, Haktyryn appeared like a lovely girl, and for Anmevkai he looked like a handsome young man. With both of them he talked separately, and to both of them he expressed gratitude and love, and in the end the twins were drawn apart by jealousy and mistrust to each other. One by one Haktyryn overpowered and killed them, and took their magic, though he never could wield it as easily and as effectively as they could.

When he was murdering Damevkyn, Togonai the Child of the Fire heard her brother’s dying scream and flew from the top of her mountain to see what happened. But, seeing her, cunning Haktyryn changed shape again and appeared before her as her brother, and Damevkyn’s corpse he made look like a large wolf’s carcass, and told her that the wolf attacked and killed Anmevkai. That raised Togonai’s suspicions, for she knew her siblings’ powers and knew that a mere wild beast was unlikely to kill them. Nevertheless, she followed him, but never changed into human shape. Upon seeing Anmevkai’s body, she grew confident that the person she saw in front of her wasn’t her brother, and she decided to kill him. She asked if he wanted to live with her now that the twin sister was dead, and Haktyryn eagerly agreed. Togonai asked him to climb onto her back, and when he did she flew to the mountain, and there she tried to shake him off her back into the lava pond below. But, using his newly obtained magic, the sorcerer suspended himself in mid-air and made Togonai so heavy that she couldn’t fly anymore and dropped down all the way to the mountain foot. There, she landed into the swamp where Nallukai the Snake Child lived with her children.

Nallukai found the wounded sister and listened to her story, and then she hid Togonai in the mud-hut and went to meet the sorcerer. She pretended to be happy to see him and unaware of her sister’s fate, and when he asked to show him the way through the swamps, she agreed. But instead of guiding him through, she and her children led him into the very middle of the swamp, into the deadliest bog, and then slipped away like a snake. But Nallukai didn’t know that for Haktyryn the bog wasn’t a danger. Using his magic he crossed the swamp to its northern side, and there he lit a fire, and took water from the swamp, and boiled it, and added mud, and swamp weeds, and spit in the concoction, and said an incantation, and poured it back into the swamp. And in that same moment all the swamp water glowed red, and Nallukai and all her children turned into tentacled monsters. Nallukai herself was turned into a Marlboro, and from her that kind of monsters began.  
Togonai tried to talk to Nallukai, but she was unresponsive and only tried to attack her. Seeing that her attempts were fruitless, the Dragon Girl left the swamp and flew to the North, hoping that she wasn’t too late to help her siblings.

Taderyn’s land the sorcerer avoided, for the power of the Child of Hope was too strong; Haktyryn could not even step on it.

Ardyn the Wind Child wasn’t hard to find and very easy to deceive. The boy was still too young, and he was only eager to teach the stranger his Wind Magic. After that he showed him the road to Imannai’s ice house.

Imannai the Child of the Winter, on the other hand, saw Haktyryn’s darkness and cold and refused to help him. When he attacked her, she cried for help, and Ardyn hurried to protect her. Even together they were too weak to defeat him, and he knocked them both down, but before he could take their hearts out and eat them, Togonai ambushed him, and under her relentless attacks he turned away and fled. Togonai then took her brother and sister and carried them to the Forest Tribe, where they were healed and left to recover.

While Nimnukai and Togonai were deciding what to do, Taderyn arrived and told them that the evil in the northernmost mountains was becoming too strong; the lost spirits were again roaming the wilderness, and animals were running away in fear. He could only protect a small part of the land, he said, but it was not enough, for the evil was growing and soon would consume all the North as far as the Nallukai’s swamp.

Nimnukai the Child of the Forest sent messengers to Lamuai and Tawyn, but the former returned with no news of the Children of the Sea, and the latter brought the answer that Children of the Stone didn’t sense any evil and didn’t see a reason for declaring a war. And so, the remaining Children decided to battle the sorcerer on their own.

The Haktyryn’s mountains were covered in mist and obscured by a snowstorm when the Children arrived there. The sorcerer went out to meet them, and laughed in their faces.  
“Do you think that pathetic wizards you are can defeat me?” He shouted.  
They attacked, but he countered with illusions, and instead of him they saw their beloved brothers and sisters, parents and children. Many wavered, and, unable to deflect his magic, fell down. Others attacked again, but, deceived by illusions, targeted their kin instead of the sorcerer.  
By the time Nimnukai ordered to stop the attack, many of the Children were dead or dying, and Haktyryn was unharmed.

Then Taderyn stepped forth and prayed to the Sun to give him strength to wipe the evil off the land. The Sun answered him as he always had, but before the magic could work, the sorcerer struck the Child of Hope with his ice spear and killed him, and a few moments later only Taderyn’s Spirit Stone was lying in the snow. The Children were enraged by Taderyn’s death, and the battle began anew, and this time the illusions weren’t working, as if Taderyn’s spilled blood deprived the sorcerer of some parts of his. Nevertheless, Haktyryn was still very strong. Fell under his attacks Togonai and her oldest two daughters, Nimnukai was severely wounded, and Ardyn was only just managing to dodge the spells flying around. Haktyryn wasn’t left unscratched, but still was holding.

And then, seeing her brothers and sisters dying, Imannai the Child of the Winter lunged herself at the sorcerer, and wrapped her arms around him, and poured all her heart and all her soul into the strongest Freeze spell that was ever casted. The others understood her intention and launched their strongest attack on Haktyryn to prevent him from breaking her spell, and so strong was the combined force of their magic that they all were thrown back by the blast.

When the snow settled and the air cleared, they saw instead of Immanai and Haktyryn a huge block of ice, in the depths of which vague dark shapes could be seen, and on the flat, smooth as glass surface a single red Spirit Stone was shining.  
Weeping for their sister who sacrificed herself to stop the evil, the remaining Children took the Stone and pushed the ice block into the deep chasm where it was to stay until the end of times. After that they searched for the Man and the Woman, but never found them, and so they left the North and returned to the Forest. There, Nimnukai told Ardyn to take the younger Children and leave the Forest. She told him to go through the secret passages into the far Southern lands and find the new home there, for the Northern land was corrupted by evil and a lot of time was to pass before it was habitable again. But she with a handful of her Children stayed behind to keep watch over the place where the evil sorcerer was buried.

The Children of the Forest long since had scattered through the lands and their trace was lost. No one knows if they still exist, or if their kin has completely disappeared from the world.  
The Children of the Stone became our ancestors; from them we inherited the love for tools and mechanisms, and limited abilities where magic is concerned.  
The Children of the Sea still live in the ocean; groups of them often follow our ships and boats, trying to talk to the sailors in their chirping tongue.  
As for the Mother and the Father who were the Parents of all Children, no one knows what happened to them, although in some legends it is said that the Sun took them to the sky, where they watch over us, and if ever the world will be in so big danger that our kind will be unable to save it, they will intervene: the Mother by giving us cure and renovation, and if it doesn’t help, then the Father will give us all death and rebirth.

_(From “The tales of North”, Evan Marius, 1932)_

* * *

 

Scribbled on the side:

_Gaia Zodiac_  
January - The Phoenix, Life, Mother  
February - The Dolphin, Water, Girl  
March - The Hammer, Stone, Boy  
April - The Vine, Cure, Girl  
May - The Sage, Bolt, Boy  
June - The Twins, Gravity, Boy&Girl  
July - The Dragon, Fire, Girl  
August - The Snake, Bio(?), Girl  
September - The Tower, ???, Boy  
October - The Chocobo, Wind, Boy  
November - The Maiden, Ice, Girl  
December - The Rider, Instant-Death, Father

_Makes sense. But who is Haktyryn?_


End file.
